DoW under Trump has basically disfigured Iran militarily and at this point their leadership will have to be outright mad and suicidal or both to pursue a nuclear weapon ..

▲ bulbar 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

To the contrary, the war has proven to Iran how critical their nuclear program is to the regime's, and maybe Iran's, survival.

US wouldn't go into such a war against Russia, because of their nuclear program. They wouldn't have attacked Iran if they already had a standing nuclear program with strategic nuclear weaponary.

What are their options now? Strategically focus on rebuilding their defense capabilities with most likely the same result in 10-25 years or strategically focus on nuclear weapons so that adversaries won't rage war against them like that again in 10-25 years?

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gyanchawdhary 6 hours ago | parent [-]

You are theoretically right to assume this but practically this will never happen (i.e iran's nuclear ambitions) .. let me explain

As Putin once quipped, "having the desire to do something is very different from having the ability to do something" ..

Iran can desire as much as they like to "want" and "have" a nuclear program .. but the objective truth is that US just crushed the intellectual and philosophical source of this desire by eliminating their rolodex of ayatollahs ... whether you agree or not with this approach is a different matter but US has been successful in scrubbing the source of that desire so aggressively that the new hopefuls are simply exhausted to play the nuclear long game ..

Now at a personal note, I live between Dubai and London (previously Hamburg) and all these places have a significant Iranian diaspore and not a single one of those people in my circle is against what the US did and is doing in Iran ..

What hilarious though is that some HN folks have such vitriolic hate for Trump (based on the comments of the OP's post) that they'd rather see Iran have a nuclear capability than admitting that the defanging of Iran's nuclear program has been a good thing for the world ...

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defrost 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> and not a single one of those people in my circle is against what the US did and is doing in Iran ..

Interestingly the Iranians I've talked to (Eg: a married couple both with nuclear physics degrees from Iran who bailed out long long ago) would prefer to see Iran still being monitored and kept in check - they are concerned that Trump has not defanged the HEU program, merely scattered and set it back somewhat, while at the same time increasing the likelihood of rogue use of HEU and or those cache's being fed into an actual unchecked weapons program elsewhere.

A big issue, not so much discussed, is where exactly has the HEU ended up, in how many parts, and under whose control. Was it buried under rubble? Is it secure in a void? Was it moved and sequestered into multiple parts before Trump went loco?

	▲	HDThoreaun 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Expats are expats for a reason. They tend to not be aligned with the domestic views of the country they left. Often the leave exactly because their politics are incompatible with local ideology.

▲ piva00 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Much the contrary, it showed them that without a nuclear weapon they can be attacked willy-nilly by the USA/Israel, without a nuke it doesn't matter what kind of agreement or deal they reach it can always be reneged.

Iran looks at North Korea and want that kind of regime stability, at least from outside threats.

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gyanchawdhary 6 hours ago | parent [-]

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piva00 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think you are in some kind of wishful thinking world.

The USA and Israel have killed dozens of leaders, creating a vacuum which is being filled by other radicals just like the ones before. The IRGC is still there, the hardliners are taking more control of the government, I can't picture the state you mention "crushed philosophically and intellectually" at all.

Whoever is left to rebuild Iran is going to be from the same fabric that was there before this pointless war, with the added experience of what happens when you don't actually pursue a nuke but use that rhetoric as a bargaining chip. The bargain didn't work, the only way ahead for those hardliners to maintain power in the future (20-50 years) is to acquire a nuclear weapon, otherwise there's nothing that guarantee them that Israel and the USA won't attack again.

You think that radical religious zealotry gets "exhausted" like that? They will hold a grudge, and never want to be in that position again.

	▲	gyanchawdhary an hour ago \| parent [-]
		[dead]

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ifyoubuildit 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

True or false: they traded a supreme leader who made a religious edict against nuclear weapons for one who did not.

▲ defrost 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The US, under Trump, has moved from a state in which

  * regular checks kept HEU processing in Iran under agreed limits, 
  * tunnels were traversed and inertially mapped,
  * leaders were known, and communicated with

to a state in which

  * tunnels have been expanded, unmapped
  * locations of and numbers of HEU caches are no longer known,
  * "leadership" has devolved into a mosaic of cells such that, at best, one or two people know where all HEU caches are, more probably no single person knows where the caches are.

In this later, current state it's far more probable that one or more rogue cells may take their HEU caches and attempt to maximise damage to the US and or Israel.

The DoD under Trump has literally made a poor situation far far worse and greatly increased the likelihood of rogue nuclear weapons.

▲ foogazi 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why is Iran getting any money out of this ?

How do they still have any cards ?

	▲	dofm 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		They have had cards since they demonstrated, in mid March, that they would blockade the Strait, could destroy the Kuwaiti oil economy with very cheap drones, and were prepared to do the same to more US allies. The USA functionally lost this war on the 20th of March when the threat to Kuwait was demonstrated. Everything that has happened since was just delaying the inevitable. It was a mistake.

▲ cosmicgadget 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Maybe in the post-Putin power vacuum they'll have another option.